Machine Learning Part of Atlassian's JIRA Service Desk Update

A machine learning algorithm helps users of Atlassian's service desk software get their issues resolved more quickly.

Hot on the heels of a $531 million IPO, the fifth largest IPO in the U.S. of 2015, cloud collaboration company Atlassian is unveiling a new release of its service desk software, JIRA Service Desk.

IT service management (ITSM) has traditionally occupied a pretty staid area of the enterprise software landscape, but that has been changing in recent years, with service management expanding beyond IT and being adopted by business functions like HR and facilities management. Lines of business are realizing ITSM's benefits of process standardization and automation, and ITSM vendors are encouraging the trend by making their software more user friendly, especially to business users.

The latest JIRA Service Desk update includes several features that should appeal to business users, including one called smart graph. According to Sid Suri, VP of JIRA Service Desk, smart graph utilizes a hybrid algorithm that combines keyword search and machine learning to provide better search results across all of a company's service desks.

"By optimizing real interactions and machine learning to translate IT requests and common lingo, your customers get the answers they need quickly and an overall better user experience," he said.

As users create requests using particular keywords, the algorithm more readily associates the keywords - "computer mouse," for example - with the appropriate request types so users are able to locate information and place requests more quickly.

Atlassian has also added built-in customer satisfaction survey capabilities that enable IT teams to gather feedback data that identifies the strengths and weaknesses in service quality. Individual customer satisfaction scores are visible within resolved issues, and IT teams can create custom reports to measure customer satisfaction over time.

A third new feature is a problem/incident automation blueprint that notifies agents and customers when a core problem affecting multiple issues or incidents is resolved. This streamlines the workflow in instances such as a network outage that affect multiple users and involve multiple IT teams.

One of JIRA Service Desk's key advantages, Suri said, is its integration with JIRA software that is used by software development teams. "You can link JIRA Service Desk tickets to your backlog in JIRA Software and keep dev and IT connected," he said.

According to Atlassian, JIRA Service Desk is its fastest-growing product. "We've grown to more than 15,000 teams using JIRA Service Desk in just three years," Suri said.